There are many categories of goods which can be damaged or stressed by improper transport procedures. Oftentimes such damage or stress is not immediately visible by inspection of the goods. One example of such goods is wine, which, if stored with the cork above the level of liquid for an extended period of time, could result in oxidation of the wine, thus affecting its quality.
Other types of goods not receptive of indelicate handling include sensitive instruments and equipment such as refrigerators or washing machines, which may have certain components stressed if tilted or inverted during shipping.
A problem which besets utility companies is the theft of energy achieved by meter tampering. One method for tampering with an electric meter is to reorient the socket causing it to run backwards, thus causing deregistration of energy usage. The meter is removed from its upright position in the socket and thereafter reinstalled in an inverted position. With the meter running in this inverted position the dials will run backwards, thus indicating a less than an accurate consumption of energy. The meter can then be reinverted prior to being read by an energy company representative with no indication of tampering.
Thus, there is a need to provide an indicator which can show whether a workpiece has been inverted.
Several types of tilt indicators have been developed to detect if tilting or inversion has occurred. These systems are generally mechanical in nature, often relying on gravity to move a particle or flag from a resting position when the device is reoriented. Many of these indicators require complicated or involved attachment to a target unit or activation procedures such as removing a strip or cutting a slit to provide access to the components of the device. For example, several devices use particles which, when the device is inverted, pass from a storage chamber to another chamber containing an adhesive-coated surface. The particles will adhere to the adhesive surface, thus providing an indication that the unit has been disturbed from its normal or upright position. Such devices may use a strip which separates the adhesive surface area from the particle storage chamber area, which strip must be removed prior to use. The process of activating the indicator may expose the particles and adhesive to the outside environment. If moisture were to enter the unit, the particles might clump and thus not flow freely. Alternatively, the adhesive may become deactivated, thus rendering the surface incapable of retaining the particles. In these circumstances, the indicator may fail to detect that the unit has been tilted or inverted. Accordingly, there is a need for an indicator which is unaffected by environmental conditions.
Some devices must be installed during the manufacturing or assembly process and thus cannot be retrofitted easily. It is an advantage for the indicator to be attachable to an existing workpiece, which would reduce the cost of installation and increase the adaptability of the indicator to different situations. Thus, there is a further need to provide an inversion indicator which not only can be installed to a workpiece during manufacture but also can be easily retrofitted to an existing workpiece.
Occasionally, an indicator will be triggered by incidental agitation without any angular tilting occurring. Accidental triggering produces a false reading of tilting when none has occurred, which can actually cost the user money and time where no damage has occurred, but where goods are returned or discarded as defective based solely upon the indicator alert. Thus, there is a need to provide an inversion indicator which is not triggered by agitation but is triggered only by actual inversion.
On the other hand, there are numerous circumstances in which it is highly desirable to detect agitation. Violent agitation, such as by dropping, is frequently a cause of hidden damage, particularly with electronic instruments. There is a need for an indicator which would reveal whether a container has been dropped from a height sufficient to cause damage to the goods but would not be triggered by being dropped only a short distance.